“IF _it be true that there is anything approaching to the appearance of insincerity on the part of those making the Subscription_, _if we seem to confess with our lips that we do not confess and believe in our hearts we give our opponents a vantage ground of which they will not be slow to avail themselves_.” There is said to be much virtue in an IF, and _eâ virtute nos involvissemus_, had not his Lordship torn the covering away, and “left us naked to our enemies,”—self-convicted of “confessing with our lips that we do not confess and believe in our hearts.” For says his Lordship— “IN FACT, _with respect to Subscription_, _I have never yet met with a single clergyman_ (_and I have spoken with almost numberless individuals on the subject_), _who ever allowed that he agreed in every point_, _in every iota to the Subscription which he took at ordination_.” It would not be treating his Lordship with candour to give to his observation an offensive meaning, which it was not intended to convey. It is more with reference to the mal-construction and malicious use of it by our opponents, that we are led to wish that it had not been made. Since his Lordship’s subsequent pamphlet, from which we collect the sense in which he was viewing Subscription, when he made the observation, a sense in which, for instance with reference to those clauses of the Athanasian Creed, which are commonly, and unjustly, called _damnatory_, few I suspect do subscribe, being, in my opinion, in no wise bound to an application of the clauses, so manifestly at variance with the spirit in which the formulary was imposed on us by our Reformers;—since I say, this pamphlet can obtain but a very small part of the circulation of the speech itself, where the observation stands _unqualified_; the general impression of his Lordship’s meaning must be that the clergy subscribe _ex animo_, to that which _ex animo_ they do not believe. At the same time I have never seen the necessity of responding to those appeals through which the clergy of this Diocese have been called upon to take some public step, to repel the observation as an implied libel upon them. I would rather it should be remembered that his Lordship, comparatively speaking, has been but a short time amongst us, and that for anything we can tell, the enquiries of which he speaks may have been chiefly made amongst the clergy of another Diocese, (indeed, considering that it is not a likely question for a Bishop to put to candidates for Orders, or his clergy generally, the inference must be that they were), and if their “withers should be galled,” let them respond to these appeals, “ours are unwrung.”